I used to use Repour and thought it was ok. I stopped at some point and instead keep a bunch of 187.5ml bottles on hand and will pour into them if I want to enjoy over several days. I’ll fill each one up to the top and put straight into the fridge (the ones I won’t consume immediately).
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I have not heard of Repour, sounds very interesting. Thinking about the last glass, one stopper (packet) has enough reactant to handle almost 750 ml of air? Actually thinking about it if you start with half the bottle, and remove 3 oz four times there’s probably a couple of litres of air, or nearly half a litre of oxygen, to process. Yes I realise I’m no chemist (obviously!) but I’m surprised a relatively small amount of chemical can manage that.
Yes I think it can, but I think it’s silly to put one glass of wine in a bottle; by the time you’re down to half a bottle you should probably switch to a 375.
From seeing others use it (and drinking from their bottles), Repour works pretty well. My one issue is that it’s single use per bottle.
That said, wouldn’t be at all surprised if I find myself buying some this year. But I’ll use one only on the rare occasion when pouring into a 375 ml or smaller screw top bottle, up the neck to minimize air, doesn’t do the trick.
The Mylar disk is a good idea. Now in my shopping cart.
I don’t experience many oxidation problems over a week or two pouring into 375s, or even partially drunk bottles, if I refrigerate them. Exceptions: Older wines and grenache are more prone to showing oxidation after a few days.
re: Mylar Wine Disc. Amazon lists 1 for 12.99 and 2 for 2.99. Am I missing something or is this just wacky Amazon pricing? Both are Prime free shipping with same delivery date.
I’m right there with you. When you click on 1, the description below says 20 pieces, but there is no piece count for 2 or any of the other selections.
Edit: 2 appears to mean just 2 pieces, in a folded cardboard holder. Yo have to look at the additional images to, mild pun intended, put the pieces together. 1 sounds like a winner!
Another way to keep the wine fresh after drinking some is to use a Wine Preserver. This can be ordered from Cork Pops https://www.corkpops.com/products/wine-preserver?srsltid=AfmBOopG_SC1wH6_jYmqWxQdoPE8P8chbqgkaOKpbTjEEicjX368t5UG .
The Wine Preserver squirts Nitrogen into the bottle. That’s inert and heavier than air, so it chases the Oxygen out. Then you seal the bottle with a cork or whatever is handy. It’s cheap (one $10 WP is good for about 80 squirts) and easy to use, I’ve been very pleased with it.
Nitrogen is actually lighter than oxygen, and regular air is about 78% nitrogen meaning it readily mixes with the ~20% oxygen.
Squirting nitrogen gas in the bottle can, at best, displace all the air in the headspace. Probably need a large application of gas to fully displace the oxygen-containing-air in the bottle.
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Similar to this, but pure food grade argon is ArT spray. I’ve had good results but still defer to Repour for longer storage when not using a Coravin.
https://www.amazon.com/ArT-Wine-Preserver-Enjoy-Your/dp/B01MEHJCQ2/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2LOW944AMS6EH&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.tMcEUBkdTQgZex-kGndQsg.rGP7AopfFCdJBcGcWMT4qZGWdAe0nkE7vtI6iDVPvz0&dib_tag=se&keywords=art%2Be%2Bargon&qid=1744403096&sprefix=art%2Bargon%2Caps%2C158&sr=8-1&th=1
Are you talking about the mylar discs? They don’t affect the wine. Their only purpose is to prevent drips when pouring. And I guess they look kind of cool. Another gadget I tried a few times and gave up on as unnecessary. At least they don’t harm the wine.
If you mean the acrylic pour restrictors which measure a specific amount per pour, those do require that the bottle be turned upside down. Have to decant, rinse the bottle, and put the wine back in the bottle to avoid stirring up sediment. I’ve used those for large blind tastings where we needed to get a lot of small pours per bottle. That does get a fair amount of oxygen in the wine.
I used to add glass marbles to fill the head space, but bottles generally don’t last long enough in the house to make it worth the effort unless the wine isn’t captivating
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20 pourers for $12.99?
Yeah, I was thrown by the item package quantity: 1 whereas the others show the number in the package. Missed the number of pieces 20 below. In my defense, I’m easily confused!!
Hi everyone,
Glad to see there is interest in my method. It actually took a lot of trial and error, but it’s the best technique that I’ve come up with. While I’m not opening my very best stuff and enjoying it a glass at at a time with this method, I’ve become much less reluctant to open older wines on a weeknight or when I just want a little wine (or a little bit of multiple wines). It has been a game changer for me. I have lots of thoughts on the posts. Here they are all together:
Yes exactly, Alan. The whole point of this post is how to enjoy aged, relatively fragile, wines BTG. That is why I don’t do the double decant- as you say, each pour introduces more oxygen.
Many on this board have advocated for this method. Seems to have gain popularity for remote tastings during COVID. I agree it is great if you want to share a bottle among friends who are geographically separated. I’ve tried it, wine is preserved very well, but there are few problems. First, my goal is to be able to enjoy a wine a small glass at a time. That means each bottle is filling up 5 or 6 of these small Boston rounds. If you want to a have a few bottles that you are working through at a time, that multiplies into dozens of little bottles making a mess in my fridge. It gets confusing and messy. The other shortcoming with this method, and this is a small quibble, is that again you are opening predefined volumes. Once you open a Boston round, you gotta drink the whole thing. If you decant into a single bottle topped with a Repour, you can enjoy any amount that you’d like.
The 375mL is not a bad idea; I do that sometimes. However, that obligates me to consuming a half bottle of wine, which I don’t always want to do. The beauty of decanting into a full sized bottle is that you can have as much or as little as you want. The Pivot could work, I suppose. I haven’t tested it. But I don’t think the Vacuvin would work as well. Two reasons- 1) the repour removes oxygen from the headspace, while the vacuvin simply lowers the pressure. There’s still oxygen in there. 2) if you’re worried about pulling out aromatics due to headspace, lowering the pressure with a vacuvin will only compound the problem.
The discs are great. The biggest challenge with this method is the decanting into the narrow opening of an empty wine bottle. The discs make this pretty easy. You can rinse them off and they last forever. And yes, if you decant initially into a 375mL, you can’t cheat! I’ve successfully done this method with wines over 30 yrs old. Try it a few times with some wines that are not too precious until you get the hang of it. I think you’ll be pleased with the results. Let me know how it turns out!
No. I use one Repour per bottle. That is what the manufacturer recommends and that seems to work well.
The reactant is copper (I) oxide, or Cu2O, which will react with air to form Cu (II) oxide, or CuO2. My level of chemistry is limited to undergraduate level chemistry (and one year of teaching high school chemistry!), and I’m not sure exactly how much reactant is in each Repour, but some stoichiometry tells me that there should be plenty to absorb all the oxygen from a few liters of air. In fact, I suspect you could use a single stopper over a few bottles, depending on how often you open them.
You could, though that will introduce more oxygen. The Repour should be fine, even when there is less than half a bottle of wine.
Yes, that is the downside. And why I prefer Coravin for younger bottles without sediment and with spry corks.
Agreed. I also will shove the cork into a partially consumed bottle and stick in the fridge for a week or so. The advantage of this method is that it works well with older wines and you can go well beyond a week or two. At least for me. I haven’t tried Grenache, though now I want to try. When I do, I’ll report back here!
I’ve tried products like these and have been disappointed. Also, if you’re doing this with older wines, it doesn’t solve the sediment problem.
Finally, @Rohit_B, @Andrew_K, @RyanM brought up the concern of headspace diminishing aromatics in the wine. I understand how this might theoretically be the case, but admittedly going on nothing by my gut, I just don’t think a few hundred mL of air (mostly removed of oxygen from the repour) sitting above a wine is going to absorb enough aromatic compounds out of the wine to a degree that would be perceptible. Whenever you have wine in a glass, you effectively have infinite “headspace”. By this logic, a wine should lose its aromatics in a very short time after pouring. And while wines do evolve in the glass, I’ve never heard of aromatics just blowing away into the “headspace” of the room. Wine in a closed bottle, at the very maximum, will never have more than 750mL of headspace- that’s just such a small amount. I don’t know, I’m just skeptical that this is even a thing. Again, this is just my intuition- I have never done any real tests of this. Please let me know if you have. I kind of want to myself. Actually, I think the best way to test this out would be to have save two bottles, one with headspace, and the other with the headspace eliminated using @David_K_o_l_i_n ‘s marble trick!
Love the discussion,
Noah
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Have you ever used a food-grade funnel to give yourself a bit more room for error on the pour? Some of them even seem to come with a filter to catch sediment that sneaks through. Something like:
https://www.amazon.com/Kitchen-Filling-Bottles-Strainer-Stainless/dp/B08L3S1KVJ
or
https://www.amazon.com/Walfos-Stainless-Removable-Transferring-Ingredients/dp/B0CC1W8BB8
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I tried it a couple of times. I didn’t like it. In order for the funnel to be seated properly, the bottle needs to be fairly upright. That results in lots of splashing, which is counterproductive if you’re trying to do a gentle pour in order to mimi minimize exposure oxygen. I think the best technique is to hold the receiving bottle at quite a steep angle so the wine gently flows down the neck. Once, I tried holding the bottle at an angle with a funnel in it, and as I was pouring wine in, the funnel shifted and I almost spilled wine all over the place. With a disc, the funnel becomes unnecessary. And I’ve also never felt the need to pour through a filter. Maybe if I was using port tongs or something to filter out glass shards, but otherwise, pouring over a light source does the trick for me.
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I was a chemistry major for premed. I have been a fan of decanting into volumetric flasks and pour all of the way up to the ground glass stopper. My preferred size is the 250 ml which is 2 glasses where I decant into 2 of them with a glass funnel and then decant the last bit into a glass to drink immediately.
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Thanks for the tips, I’ll give it a shot! This Franmara thing @Dan_Kravitz posted a couple of years ago might provide some extra protection against sediment as well:
Amazon carries them: Amazon.com